What is the right temperature to talk politics? It certainly wasn’t in a draughty room, with a half packet of un-smoked cigarettes, cheap rum, bad wine and a packet of potato chips—lays.
I remember one sanctimonious bitch telling me, “stop calling it Ruffles Lays, it isn’t. It is just lays,” after which the pig-headed-mental-age-of-16 woman-child rolled her eyes. “It isn’t just lays, it is Frito Lays, you dumbfuck! Next time you get in trouble, call fucking Pepsi,” I didn’t say. But that is what exactly came to me when I sat there in that room which had five window panes missing. I have these moments. I am a petty and vindictive man when it comes to ungrateful pricks who don’t know how to spell gratitude.
The weather, Google later told me, was 1 degree Centigrade and windy. I could have sworn it was 1 degree Fahrenheit and a blizzard. For those who didn’t know or were too lazy to get the gag—1 degree Fahrenheit is -32 degrees Celsius. Do the math. Now, you get it? Attaboy!
But don’t they discuss politics, if ever, when it is the last digit before zero, near a fire place in the living room? Do they make fireplaces in living rooms anymore? And before we move on, who are these they? I have to find them. They make odd rules—don’t drink water after eating a watermelon. Don’t run before the sun is out. Why the fuck not?
I digress.
Let me start from the beginning.
I was sitting with the Colonel and four strangers at 10,000 feet above sea level in Lachung, Sikkim. The four friends worked together in the same store selling clothes. They had taken a few vacations together. One of them was married; none of them had a proper education and all of them were younger than, both, the Colonel and I. In any normal circumstance, you wouldn’t find us two city boys sharing a drink, a few laughs and drinking stories with four salesmen from Murshidabad. I am not looking down at them; I am looking down at us. But this was not any ordinary circumstance, this was special. This was the Colonel’s time and it was one fucking degree centigrade. Did I say that already? I will say that again.
The Colonel, for the record, loves to let people stumble their way in and out of conversations. He leads them like a predator, sniffing around them, pushing them into a corner and when the time is right—the smart comment and the wry smile. Score! Smart man the Colonel.
Why am I whining without anything happening? Just you wait.
“Do you vote,” the colonel asked them. Surprisingly, the boys, whose crowning glory was holding down a job for two years and managing to score homemade alcohol, loved politics.
“We do, whenever we can.”
“Communist in your state, who in your district.”
“Congress and it shall be forever.”
The colonel and I, grudgingly, loved where this would take us. “Why Congress?” I spat. Hoping the disdain for the very average but uninspiring thieving fools would stay out.
“He [Congress elected leader from rural West Bengal] has done a lot of good. He has paved the streets, cleaned up the city and he doesn’t let us blare the horns after 5 pm, he [the humble and honest leader] says it is illegal,” said one rather proudly. The four boys were proud of their city and its hand in banning frustrating horns snared, especially, by the idiot outside my window. Could we send his sorry ass to Murshiadbad? He would like it there. Why? You don’t ask. The boys enticed us to visit by telling stories about the sights and sounds and how easy it was to score a hot steamy night of anonymous sex. Apparently Mr Murshidabad lets brothels and a good, healthy trade of marijuana flourish under his rule but not legitimate voting procedures? Now, wait. I just violated two rules of writing—1) Answer one question before getting on another and 2) Get to the bloody point. I will.
“There have been reports that he [the humble and honest leader] has faked votes,” one of them said and he smiled. I was shocked. I knew these things happen. I watch The Simpsons too. But these guys said it with pride. It was whatever-holiday-the-colonel-believed-in came early for the Colonel. The Colonel smiled with genuine delight. The child was handed his candy.
“You still trust the system,” Colonel asked, what he hoped was, a rhetorical question. The wry smile, the smart comment, this was it. Or was it?
“Yes. Obviously,” one said.
What?!
“There was another man who tried to stand up to [the humble and honest leader] but [the humble and honest leader] was a gangster, before he turned politician, and the man was never seen again,” another said with even more pride, implicating [the humble and honest leader] had him killed.
“Do you know anyone who had his vote faked?” asked both the Colonel and I. Both smelling a story. No said one. No said the second. No said the third and the fourth guy said nothing at all. The conversation then veered to the reason why younger women married older men.
“Who had his vote faked,” I asked the fourth. The boy smiled. I offered him my cigarette and lit it for him.
“My mum,” he said.
“How did she come to know?”
“She went to the polling booth and [the humble and honest leader] told her the vote was made and she could go home.”
“Did you complain?”
“She would have voted for him anyway. Why would I? We don’t have time for this. And I don’t want to disappear.”
Fuck.
Before I wrote this blog, I was screaming and yelling at the TV screen almost having forgotten about this conversation. Renuka Chowdhury was squirming her way out of TV interviews and had given feeble excuses about the food price rise. I screamed: this why I don’t vote. All of you are fools. This system is broken. No one can be happy in this system.
Except those four from Murshidabad, I suppose. It was 13 degrees centigrade in Mumbai and it seemed cold, even then, to talk politics.
